Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee [Part 2], , 3:25:14 to 3:27:37
Tourism Australia's Managing Director clarifies the agency's focus on demand generation rather than policy modeling, while acknowledging industry feedback on the high value of working holiday makers.
Topics: Tourism, Austrade
Speakers: Robin Mack, Senator Matthew Canavan, Senator Raff Ciccone, Unknown Speaker
>> thanks Paul and team thank you good night we'll now welcome Robin Mack managing director Tourism Australia offices and agency here hurry up sorry we've only got literally four And while we're doing this quick change over to Robin, uh, as you walk up, if you have an opening statement, could you please table it? Do you have an opening statement? >> You do. All right. If you could table it and we'll circle to the committee. >> Uh, Senator Canavan.
>> Uh, look, just a couple of quick questions. Well, first of all, uh, following on from that discussion, which I think you're in the room for, uh, the tourism ministry had Oh, sorry. Have you
No. >> Oh, good. No, no, go, go, go.
>> Uh, the tourism industry are up in arms about these changes to working holiday maker visas. Have you done any work assessing what the impact will be and uh whether their claims are correct?
>> Uh, thank you, Senator. Robin Mack, managing director of Tourism Australia. For for us at Tourism Australia, we're a demand generating agency. So, it's not our role to work on modeling. Um, that's what our other agency partners will do in that sense. For us, we focus on marketing and what we can do to create demand. Uh we do liers with our industry quite extensively in our work through conferences and events and one-on-one engagement. So feedback we do get from our industry, we do share with our stakeholders. Yes.
>> Well, Tourism Australia has previously identified that working holiday makers are among Australia's highest value visitors, contributing $3.2 billion back in 2019. If fewer of them come here, what's going to be the impact on our local tourism industry?
So in terms of the modeling that that's not as I said not something that we do from from us it's about demand generation that we talk to a number of high yielding traveler cohorts. Working holiday maker is one of those as a business event as our leisure travelers which those that are coming for a holiday or visiting friends and relatives. So it's a a broader group that we put under the umbrella of high yielding travelers.
uh did the government ask tourism Australia for any advice on the impacts of a ballot and cap system?
>> So our our role as an agency is not to advise on policy. Uh but as I said in terms of when we get feedback from industry that's what we share.
>> Did the did the government ask you for any advice in this case
>> I guess we might have shared it ahead of being asked but we certainly have continual dialogue between our